


Pale Fire

by ecphrasis



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M, Oneshot, Oral Sex, POV Katara (Avatar), Safe Sane and Consensual, Two Shot, Zutara
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:48:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25160398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ecphrasis/pseuds/ecphrasis
Summary: Zuko comes to the Southern Water Tribe to make amends. Katara receives him. Each gives something to the other.Now with part two!
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 42
Kudos: 553





	1. Pale Fire

**Pale Fire**

  
_The sun’s a thief, and with his great attraction_  
 _Robs the vast sea; the moon’s an arrant thief,_  
 _And her pale fire she snatches from the sun;_  
 _The sea’s a thief, whose liquid surge resolves_  
 _The moon into salt tears; the earth’s a thief,_  
 _That feeds and breeds by a composture stolen_  
 _From general excrement: each thing’s a thief._  
William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens

She holds the moment in her mind. The three blue-sailed ships raise up the blue and silver flag of the Southern Water Tribe, and a muskmoose horn sounds in welcome from each of the three gates, melding into a single eerie harmony. Two waterbenders, middle-aged men from the Northern Water Tribe, fissure the ice easily, and draw the ships into the deep harbor that shelters the first city the pole has known in nearly seventy years. Like cormorants dipping on a downdraft, the ships fly easily into dock, and the sound of raised voices skims across the water towards her.

She feels the water surge against the opened passageway, feels the waterbenders draw fast the massive sea-gates, feels the frothing sea still once more into a tranquil bay. From where she sits, the ocean beyond the great wall is not visible, and the blue-white of the ice blends into the blue-white of the sky. She has to fight to pick out the horizon line, and she holds the thin grey smudge in her mind, for a moment, only a second, really, lost in memory of the lands beyond the world’s curve.

Then she returns to the colors of her world spread before her.

There is the dark blue of the ships’ sails, the deeper black-blue of the ocean, the white snow and the pale ice and the blue-white sky, blue everywhere, as far as the eye can see or the mind can imagine. Even the sun is a vast white light, colorless, nearly heatless, although it is near the solstice. 

The ships are weighed down by the spring harvest of Igni Fallow (lychee nuts, cabbage, cashews, wheat), fourteen furnace-machines that use coal to produce warmth, one hundred and fifty gold bars, one quarter adulterated with silver, one quarter adulterated with bronze, and one half pure. Additionally, there are two thousand scrolls from the newly established scriptorium on Roku’s Island, which contains the Fire Nation’s long-guarded knowledge of mechanical machinery, the oral poetics of the Northern Water Tribe, transcribed for the first time by an anthropologist from the University of Ba Sing Se, and the first complete record of the Avatar Cycle in more than a century.

The ships are each manned by twenty Water Tribe sailors, an easy mixture of Northern and Southern men, and four women daring enough to defy the long-held taboo against their sea-travel. And on one of the ships, there is one red-clad man, and his attendants.

“Chieftain,” Bato says. “The ships have docked.”

As though she cannot feel the way the ice shifts, the way the city opens to embrace her wayward vessels, the way a turtleduck will spread her wings over her chicks to shelter them. 

“And the preparations for the feast?”

“Everything is in order, Chieftain.”

“Excellent,” she says. “I will walk down to the harbor, and greet the sailors.” As soon as she stands, she is draped in a heavy sealskin coat, sewn entirely from white pelts, an impossible luxury she could not have imagined in her youth. It weighs against her shoulders, an uncomfortable burden. The heavy necklace of aquamarine and whalebone dangles from her neck, a constant reminder of her status. She looks to Bato, and he smiles at her. 

Her father’s old friend offers her his arm, and taking it, they walk down from her seat on the high cliff, into the bustling city. The rebuilt tribe, composed of those disaffected by the rigid hierarchy of their Northern counterpart, and the various scatterlings of the decimated tribes of the South, hums around her, and everywhere she looks, she sees the blue and silver flag of her people. And occasionally, she sees the tetravalent standard of peace, of unity, of balance, the mixed blue, red, yellow, and green of the Four Nations.

Halfway down the city, she glances upwards and catches a glimpse of the ice-sculpture of Avatar Aang, standing in the shadow of Avatar Kuruk. The sculptors, long-sighted, have left room for an additional statue, that of the next Avatar, who will be a water-bender. 

“Perhaps this will be the last of these wretched voyages,” Bato says. “It’s been five years, we should be drawing close to the end.” In the light of the sun, which does not set in the summer, his lined face appears haggard, and Katara feels a twinge of concern. Her father’s health had failed after a seemingly minor illness only two years past, and left him incapable of fulfilling a chief’s duties. Her heart clenches at the thought of Bato becoming ill. Once the resettlement is finished, she will send him away, she decides, to seek respite. He has scarcely left her side since Hakoda’s abdication.

“Even this wound will knit closed,” she says, more to convince herself than her advisor. Her people dip their heads to her when she passes them, some go so far as to kneel and press their lips to her shadow. Sokka would revel in such admiration, had he not chosen to dwell in the Earth Kingdom, as her envoy to King Kuei, and, more tellingly, as Suki’s husband. His rejection of his birthright had left her reeling, left her to assume a mantle she did not fully understand, and did not fully want. Sokka’s easy jokes and gentle camaraderie set people at ease. Her water bending is better at building walls than bridges.

She comes to the docks, and finds the ships have been tethered, and their anchors sent down to hold them in place. The sailors are bustling around, too busy to stop their labors, but not so busy that they entirely fail to acknowledge her.

“Chief!” Baru, Bato’s son, a boy only a few years older than Sokka, calls. He’s recently been made a captain, and she has no doubt he’ll eventually succeed his father as her Naval Commander. And she does not miss the way he looks at her, the way his eyes follow her, the way he positions himself to intercept her. She is already two years past the age most Water Tribe women marry, and there are whispers. 

Sometimes she hates Sokka, for taking from her her only hope at a normal life. She could have vanished into a village somewhere, become the midwife-witch, gained some renown as a healer, and died old and fat and happy, unmindful of power or position.

“Captain Baru,” she says. “How was your voyage?”

“Easy enough, Chieftain,” he says. He kisses her hand, a gesture that is almost, but not quite, too familiar, and for a moment she wonders how he can think that he deserves her. She saved the Avatar, she saved the world, and he spent most of the war rowing on her father’s ship. The thought is churlish, she knows she ought not be so prideful. And yet she pulls her hand away in a gesture that smacks of disdain, and she watches Baru’s face fall, and she feels the way Bato beside her shifts in evident discomfort. Her father never had to deal with adoring captains, or at least, if he did, they didn’t make their intentions known to him and to the entire world by pawing at him. “How has your city been?”

“We’ve only grown happier,” Katara says. She scans the ships, sees that they have begun unloading the scrolls, wrapped carefully in oilskin and vellum to keep out the wet, and she forces her eyes to remain on Baru. “Pinna had her child.” But if she expects the news of his first mate’s wife to dull his affections, she has miscalculated. He smiles happily enough, but he takes her hand in his, and gazes into her eyes with his eager, sea-blue stare, and says:

“I hope someday we’ll welcome a child in Hakoda’s line, Chief.” And before she can pull away, before she can scold him for his impropriety, she raises her eyes and meets the Fire Lord’s gaze.

Her breath catches in her throat. He has grown into a man’s full stature, and he is dressed, as always, in the crimson and gold that of his people. He stands out like a livid scar against the calming blues of the city, he is as noticeable, as unexpected, as an ember on an iceflow. His gold eyes gleam in the light of the summer sun. He is nothing like the people of her tribe, he is obviously an outsider, a stranger, one who does not belong amidst the white and light blue of her city. She sees his wave of greeting, and then she sees the way he looks at her hand, linked with Baru’s. She drops the Captain’s hand as though scalded, suddenly imagining how the scene must appear, and she smooths her robes so that she can at least make a pretense at acceptability.

Zuko must think her quite callous, to engage in affection on a day of repatriation. She’s proud and grateful that the Four Kingdoms mutually agreed to foster children born from shared parentage, but the firebenders born among the women of the Water Tribe signify the violence of their conception with every exhalation of their burning breaths. Repatriation day is rarely one of merriment.

Before her father’s illness, she had attended a repatriation in Ba Sing Se, welcoming home the offspring of the Earth Kingdom’s violated women.

Seeing so many orphaned, abandoned, or otherwise unwanted children drove her to seek escape at the bottom of a wine glass, and she cannot help the urge as it rears its head anew. She lifts her head, prepared this time for the way his eyes burn into hers, and she opens her arms in the ritual gesture of welcome. 

“Fire Lord Zuko,” she says.

“Chieftain Katara,” he responds. He’s perfectly polite, he dips his head to her as though they do not share a history so complex a scribe would require three scrolls to tell the full tale. They could be strangers. There’s no sign of the Zuko who sends her letters, who writes the words that give her some semblance of hope, the Zuko whose gentle advice makes her smile, even a thousand miles and three weeks after he penned them. He’s cool towards her, disinterested, lacking the intense heat he normally exhibits.

“I trust you had a good voyage?”

“Your sailors are so skilled I scarcely noticed we were not on land,” he responds. “I’m grateful for your generosity in providing the ships.” That’s part of the agreement. She will provide the ships and the men, he will retrieve the children and pay a steep blood-price for them. Neither will discuss the nature of their birth.

“We’re pleased to celebrate another milestone in our peace,” she says, and she cannot help the bitterness in her voice. She knows he hears it, because he stiffens slightly, and his robes press for a moment against his defined muscles. “Welcome to the Southern Water Tribe, Fire Lord,” she says. 

“It’s an honor to be housed amongst friends,” he says, all dignity and civility. “I’ll have my escorts help your sailors unload the gifts.” 

“I will show you to your rooms.” Like Bato earlier, Zuko offers her his arm, all courtesy, and as with Bato earlier, she takes it. Unlike Bato, Zuko’s strength is waxing, not waning, and she feels the raw power he exudes. Of course. With the midnight sun, his bending must be amplified. Heat rolls off him in waves, no doubt augmented by thee frankly ridiculous number of layers he's wearing. A memory from five years ago resurfaces, as she considers how, on the run and freezing, she had curled up to him and soaked up his warmth. She wants to speak, wants to regain the easy camaraderie that used to stand between them, but her tongue is thick and her mind is dull, made languid by the warmth that rolls off him in waves, perhaps. She wonders how any woman can stand sleeping in his bed without being roasted alive, and then she flushes at the thought and resolves to put it from her mind. The women he sleeps with are Fire Nation, perhaps they find the heat enticing. 

“You should be proud,” he says. And she doesn’t know what he’s talking about. “The city,” he clarifies. “It’s nothing at all like it was the first time I came here.” His joke is easy, the reminder of their brief time as enemies almost nostalgic. 

“I’d sock your arm if you weren’t wearing more gems than a woman on her wedding day,” she responds, and he laughs. She realizes that he has a lovely laugh, like the sound of a log popping open in a fireplace, all warmth and ease and comfort. 

“I know what it’s like to- to have to fill a father’s role before you’re ready.” He says, and her lifted spirits plummet once more.

“I didn’t imagine it would ever be mine,” she says. “Your letters have been helpful, though. I used your advice about randomly selecting parts of the city to inspect, and I found an illicit trade in whaleseals out of season.” And she wants to bang her head against a wall. Surely the Fire Lord has never bothered himself about such a petty issue. But Zuko laughs, and she is struck once again by how beautiful he looks bathed in merriment.

“I’m glad to be of help,” he says.

___________________

After the feast, after the fancy-dress dinner where she sits on a pedestal and scarcely eats, after she addresses the assembled nobles, benders and sailors and captains and war-heroes, her speech prepared and her tongue dry from the anxiety produced by half a hundred pairs of staring eyes, (the most terrifying those of the little girl who sits morose and solemn in her blue robes, and Zuko, and Zuko’s four attendants, after she dips her head to avoid the confused tears of the eight year old who does not understand the history she is a part of, after Zuko stands and expresses his guilt and sorrow for the lives the Fire Nation ruined, after the presentation of the gifts and their distribution, one third for palace use, one third for the schools, and one third for the people, Katara retreats from the blue ice hall, from the city itself, into her meditation garden.

The sun is cradled just above the horizon, although it is past midnight. The solstice is only a week out, and the dark is a distant memory. The moon hangs opposite, waxing towards fullness. For the first time in nearly seventy years, the full moon and midsummer will fall on the same day. The preparations for the feast and celebration have worn her down, and she hasn’t slept for more than five hours at a time in the past month. Her few moments of peace come when she is permitted by her nagging advisors and outrageously busy schedule to sit still and clear her mind of worries, to work through her bending forms, to breathe, to remember, to try to forget.

Her garden is a building built from solid glass, a gift from the Fire Lord to her father when he was elected Chieftain, and inside, the temperature is easily thirty degrees warmer, as sweltering as any summer day in the Fire Nation. She sits before a small stream, hemmed in on either side by moss covered stones, and she holds the day’s memory in her mind and begins to compartmentalize. 

The weeping child, the blue-sailed ships skimming into harbor, Zuko’s gold-flame eyes, Bato’s gentle encouragement, the warmth of his hand, so like her father’s, on her shoulder, the way the sun stood over her city during dinner, Baru’s inappropriate gesture, the way Zuko’s eyes gleamed in the evening light, the way her people rose as one when she entered the hall for the feast, the oppressive weight of the white sealskin on her shoulders, the way Zuko’s eyes drifted to her necklace, the way his arm felt beneath her hand, the way his eyes burned into hers-

She shakes her head to clear the image from her mind, and upon looking up, she sees the eyes themselves, gazing levelly at her, and she startles upright before she realizes that they are separated by a pane of glass, and Zuko is about to knock on the little ice door, a concession to her advisor’s fear for safety. Only a waterbender can open it, and only she knows the secret mechanisms for admitting herself. She stills her heart, and the waterbending form flows from her. The door pops open, and he enters with a gentle smile.

“Wow, it’s warm in here,” he says. “Sorry to -ah- disturb you.”

“You didn’t,” she says. At least, not intentionally. He cannot help the fact that his gleaming eyes have burned themselves into her memory. He is bundled up as though for winter, she sees, wrapped in layer upon layer of skins, arctic fox, penguin, muskmoose, seal. She doesn’t know how he isn’t drenched in sweat, it’s summer and apart from her formal cloak, she’s only worn clothing that’s light and loose-fitting for weeks.

“I have one final gift,” he says.

“Oh,” she protests. “I can’t accept anything privately. Everything has to be catalogued and fairly distributed-”

“Katara, you haven’t changed a bit,” he teases. He has changed, his voice has gotten deeper and his shoulders have gotten broader, and when he says her name there’s a frisson of pleasure that slithers down her spine and buries itself in her stomach. “Always Miss Rule-Follower. I haven’t brought you a diamond mine, it’s just something I thought you’d like. A friend-gift, not a nation-gift.” And in his hands, she sees, he’s holding a large glass box with a misty interior. It’s warm to the touch, and when she opens it, the mist spills out and wreathes her in silver, and inside, she sees a pair of firelilies, red and gold and newly sprouted.

“They’re beautiful,” she says. She draws them out, and holds them in her cupped palm. She feels the liquid tendrils of green life and clear water flowing through them, and Zuko smiles at her, really just a slight quirking of his lips, but she memorizes the image, stores it up to mull over later.

“They grow best when they have access to running water,” he says. “But you’ll want to plant them deep, because their roots are surprisingly long. And if they start to take over, don’t try to uproot them, and whatever you do, don’t burn them. If they are exposed to cold, they’ll wither and die quite quickly, but fire spreads them.”

“Thank you,” she says.

“I’ll help you,” he says. “Just let me wrangle out of my coat.” And, embarrassed both to turn away and to watch, she feigns disinterest as he pulls layer after layer off himself. Each stripped layer reveals a more definite outline of his body, and she sees he has grown taller and broader since they last met three years.

“You should visit in the winter,” she says. “You’d be so bundled up you’d have to roll around to move.”

“There’s a reason I only come in the summer,” he says. He strips off five layers before he comes at last to his thin linen tunic, dyed a dull butterflower yellow. She does not allow herself to notice the way his arms ripple as he moves, nor does she care to observe the smoothness of his gestures, lithe and so different from the jagged firebending forms of his youth. His arms, she sees, are a patchwork of scars, most insignificant, but some the vicious mark of fire or blade. “Alright,” he says. “Time to plant some flowers.” He meanders through her garden, and she watches him the way she watches the horizon, memorizing his lines and planes, the mysteries of him. He smiles when he comes to her moonflowers, and he stops to inspect a clump of climbing moss that she had Suki send her from Kyoshi. Near the head of the stream, he kneels and touches the earth. “Here’s perfect,” he says. She wonders when he took up gardening. Perhaps he too cannot sleep at night.

Fire Lord Zuko uses his hands to draw away the dirt, and when the ground grows harder, he uses the blade of his ceremonial dagger to pry up the close-packed until he has a hole about as deep as his arm. It gives her a strange feeling in her stomach to watch him at work, and she can scarcely pay attention to her thoughts, since he’s concentrating so fiercely on his actions, and she’s concentrating so fiercely on him.

“I’ll take them now,” he says, and she returns the flowers to his care. He touches their petals delicately, and they seem to brighten beneath his fingertips. He loosens the earth around the plants’ roots, and gently covers them with soil, which he warms slightly in his hands. Katara cannot help the feeling that she is somehow intruding, that her presence is ruining Zuko’s contemplative, almost meditative, actions, which is ridiculous, because he is in her garden, albeit one he gave her.

“I don’t have a gift for you,” she says, to break the silence. Not one that she hasn’t already given him. She didn’t know he’d break custom and ritual and give her something beyond the gold and the food and the books. She considers what would be appropriate - a golden armlet, a silver conch, a whaleskin boat, some kind of baby animal, but she comes up empty-minded, ashamed that his courtesy has bested hers.

“I don’t want anything,” he says. “It’s just flowers, Katara.” But she looks at them, bright red, blood red on a hill of bluegrass, surrounded by the fragile flowers of the arctic, and the hardier blossoms of the southern Earth Kingdom, coaxed into brighter colors by the warmth of the glass house but still only shades of purple and blue and white. The firelilies are a color so enthralling, so different from the muted, cool tones of the South that she cannot look away.

“They’re lovely,” she says. “Thank you, Fire Lord.”

“My pleasure, Chieftain," he says. He looks down at his shirt, and sees the dirt, and he groans dramatically. 

“No good deed goes unpunished,” she remarks, and the way he laughs makes her want to keep him laughing. His perfectly coiffed hair has slipped from his regal topknot, and a few strands fall into his face, and she watches him brush them away with careless, almost adolescent, ease. He is relaxed around her, nothing like the imposing ruler whom she greeted earlier. “I can get it out,” she says, before she can master herself, and she gestures for him to give his tunic to her, as she has often enough before. And he, obediently, strips to the waist, as though they were still wandering the world as unsexed children. She does not look at him, but takes his shirt and dips it in the brook, and calls the water to her and draws out the dirt grain by grain. He sits beside her, and she feels the way the heat sizzles off him.

“You display truly exceptional hospitality at the South Pole,” he says. “King Kuei has never done my laundry for me.” She flushes, despite herself.

“I’ve never done King Kuei’s laundry either,” she responds, and holds up the shirt. She used to struggle to clean clothes without soap, but over the year she spent wandering with Aang, she learned a decent amount about how to adapt waterbending techniques to her needs, and the yellow shirt is free of stains. 

“I’m honored to be so special then,” he says. His voice is a low murmur, he does not look at her. Baru, she knows, would have fallen over himself to prevent her from touching anything soiled. She hands his shirt to him, still dripping, and he dries it easily, running his hands over the fabric and turning the water to steam. “What’s the firebender girl like?” He asks, and Katara sighs.

“She’s from the provinces, from a tribe even smaller than mine was. One of Zhao’s men attacked her mother out on the icefloes. Left her for dead after, she was only found two days later. Luckily it was in summer, else she would have frozen.”

“Do you have a name?” He asks.

“No,” she says. The women who bear firebenders rarely do.

“Hell, Katara, I wish I could make it right, could make everything right-”

“You were what, fifteen when it happened? You’ve done everything you can, and then some. Taking the girl to a place where she can learn to appreciate her birthright will have to be enough.”

“The mother doesn’t want to come with?”

“She gave the child up when she was three. The girl’s been passed from relative to relative ever since.”

“I hate that we did this to you,” Zuko says. He’s balled his shirt up in his hands, and she wonders whether he’ll accidentally light it on fire, although ever since he learned the origins of his element from the Sun Tribe, he’s had significantly more control over his outbursts. “It’s so wrong, so fucking evil, I wish-”

“Zuko,” she says. She realizes it’s the first time she’s said his name since he arrived. He looks at her, and she’s surprised to see tears pooled in his eyes. One slips down his cheek, and before she can stop herself, she brushes it away. “There’s still pain and hatred, Fire Lord,” she says. “But we’re healing. We have a city, we have beneficial trade agreements with the Earth and Fire Nations, we have had fourteen waterbenders identified in the last year alone. The world is less awful than it’s ever been in my lifetime. And repatriating the firebenders is a good deal better than what used to happen to them.” 

“Somehow I expected the new world would be different.”

“It’s the same world,” she says, and her voice is low and morose. He slips his shirt over his head, and turns to her.

“I’m sorry about your father,” he says. “He was always kind to me, and he was wise and generous.”

“He hasn’t risen from his bed in three weeks,” she says. “At the start of spring he was able to walk, just a bit, but he’s worse than he was last winter, and he coughs and coughs until he coughs up blood. I don’t know how to heal him.”

“I would wager the cold does him no good,” Zuko says. “You could send him to the Fire Nation.”

“Your envoy extended the same offer when he first fell ill and failed to recover. But my father believes he is dying,” she says. “And he will not die on another’s earth.”

“I’m sorry, Katara,” Zuko says.

“Me too,” she responds. Zuko touches her shoulder, lightly, and she turns towards him. Their heads are far too close together, she should draw back, if either of them were to move a hair, their lips would touch. His palm is hot, she can feel it through the blue fabric of her stole. When the body is ill, it rouses a fever to drive out infection. When a limb is removed, a surgeon uses heat to seal the wound. Sometimes, when she is dealing with a particularly stubborn winter illness, she will order the fire to be stoked, to force a fever on the body. Her body burns where he touches her. Instead of drawing away, she meets his eyes.

“Are you going to marry Captain Baru, Chieftain?” Zuko asks her. Of course he’d know Baru’s name, he’s always been good with faces and ranks and stations. If she didn’t know him so well, she would think his tone is simply one of polite interest. Her stomach flip-flops nervously, she presses her hand against the earth, and ten feet away, the pool explodes into miniature waves that roll over each other, drawn towards her like the ocean to the moon. She should tell him yes. He’s the most logical choice of anyone in her tribe, and she does have to have a child at some point.

“Perhaps when you marry Mai,” she responds. She’s conscious of how breathy she sounds, how loud her heart is in her ears. Zuko laughs, but his laugh is different than earlier.

“The poor boy’s besotted,” he says. His hand trails lower, he seizes her slender fingers in his palm, in a grip that could be called friendly, if only he wasn’t looking at her like he was planning on consuming her. “At least he's got good taste.” And she knows she isn’t imagining the way his eyes darken, or the way his words rasp in his throat. She turns her face up, and presses her lips to his. He’s burning hot, hot as a blacksmith’s tongs fresh from the fire. He wraps his arm around her waist, and brings his other hand to her cheek, and presses her flush against him. She sighs into the kiss, relishing the taste of him, until he draws back from her, only to press his lips against her neck. He’s got a day’s worth of stubble on his chin, and the prickle on her sensitive skin causes her to rock upwards against him in shock. She hasn’t kissed a boy in years, her mind’s forgotten the intricacies of desire. But her body remembers, and she wants. If she cannot have him, she knows she will consume herself entirely.

“Zuko,” she says, his name a gasp in her throat. He pauses, and his grip relaxes instantly.

“Should I stop?” He asks, his tone contrite, as though he had kissed her, and not she him. 

“Tui, no!” She says, and if she wasn’t almost assuredly about to self-immolate, she’d be embarrassed at the desperation in her voice. “Just, not here.” He lets out a little huff of amusement when she gestures to the clear glass, and she wraps her fingers in his and clutches his hand in hers. Her stomach and her heart seem to have switched places, and she can feel the blush on her cheeks. She should bid him goodnight, send him back to the guest quarters, look over the documents for tomorrow’s afternoon council meeting, and go to bed. “My chambers aren’t far,” she says. 

“Alright,” he says, and his voice is low, and soft, and sweet. He sounds bewilderedly happy, as though almost every girl in the Fire Nation, and quite a few in the Earth Kingdom, wouldn’t willingly have him in her bed. Her body is alive with need, she draws him through the midnight-sun lit halls, past idle guards who spare them a strange glance before they remember their training and snap upright, and then, at last, behind the oak door (imported from Omashu, in fact) that separates the Chieftain’s quarters from the rest of the communal building. As soon as she shuts it, she draws him to her, pressing her lips together, moving herself into him, and he responds by pressing her against the door, bending his head down, and kissing her. “Katara,” he murmurs, and her name is almost precatory on his lips.

“Zuko,” she says, and he kisses her neck again, and she has to bite her tongue to refrain from making any embarrassing noises. It would be humiliating to admit how desperate she is for him, especially since they’re both still fully clothed. 

“I won’t leave a mark,” he promises, misunderstanding her use of his name. His whispered words are sweet against her skin, she can feel every individual hair on her arms standing upright, she imagines she can feel every drop of water in the entire world. The decanter of expensive wine from Gaoling freezes at the moment when his lips toy with her ear, and she hears it shatter without comprehension. “Katara,” he groans, and she lets him draw her backwards to her bed.

“Zuko,” she says again.

“We don’t have to-” he starts. “Whatever you want, I’m happy. Say go and I’ll go. Or if you want to just lie here-”

“Zuko,” she says. His hair is a shambles, his clothes are rumbled, and with the sweet, kind look on his face, he could be the boy she first learned to love five years ago. “I want you.”

“I want you too,” he says. His words are little fires licking across her skin. She shucks off her heavy formal robes, and he peels off his shirt, revealing once again the broad planes of his chest, and Azula’s lightning scar. Her hands press against him, she feels the contours of his muscles, the steady rise and fall of his breath, the way his back flexes when she drags her fingers down his spine.

“You’ve grown up,” she says, half joking, half in wonderment.

“You’re not exactly the little waterbender I first met either,” he says with another one of his heart-loosening laughs, and she reaches impatiently for his trousers, but he knocks her hand aside. “Chieftain Katara,” he says, with mock affront. “Please, I _am_ the Fire Lord. I have standards.” He presses a languid kiss on her neck, and draws his tongue across the exposed skin of her collar.

“Patience, Waterbender,” he warns, when his kiss almost makes her leap from her skin, when her hands reach for him again.

“And here I thought fire was the element of the hasty.” She grumbles, but he draws her shift over her head, and presses an open-mouthed kiss to her right breast, and palms the left delicately with his burning hand. She wonders if he can feel her heart about to shred her ribcage in excitement.

“On the contrary,” he remarks. She shifts beneath him, and the bright gleam in his eyes deepens their color to a molten gold. “We know how to conserve a flame.” She cannot help the whimper that escapes her, and he laughs again. His hair is long and loose, and frames his face and hers. “You’re beautiful, you know. You’re smart and dangerous and compassionate and capable and an excellent chieftain too, but you’re so lovely. I didn’t know the spirits could give so many gifts to one person.”

“You’re a horrid flirt,” she says, and he grins at her, and kisses her navel, and drags his mouth downwards.

“Not for everyone,” he says, and presses a kiss just above the little triangle of her hair.

“What are you doing?” She asks, barely above a whisper.

“Well,” Zuko says. His fingers trail over her stomach, cresting the curves of her body as though he hopes to memorize her by touch alone. “I’m going to use my mouth to make you come.” His eyes meet hers, and she all but writhes in the sudden resurgence of her need, for him, for his touch. Fire pools in her belly, hotter than magma, more roiling than a whirlpool. For a moment, only a second, her lungs forget how to draw air.

“I haven’t ever-” she starts. “Nobody’s ever-”

“Nobody?” He asks, half-incredulously. She shakes her head. “Well, obviously Aang was more damaged by his stay in the iceberg than we thought, because he must have been out of his mind not to.” She flushes red, and he takes her hand in his own, scarred and calloused from years of swordsmanship and fire. “If you’re not comfortable I won’t,” he says. “But I’d like to please you, Katara.”

“I-” she starts. She should say no, reject her surging need for him, draw him up and into herself, or, better yet, send him away. But. Her stomach is on fire. She can already feel the damp between her legs. And the way he looks at her informs her that he'd be willing to do anything she wanted, if only she would ask him. “Yes. If you truly want to.” 

“I do,” he says. “Like I said, I am the Fire Lord. And I do have standards.”

“You’re insufferably arrogant, you know that?” she teases. And he kisses the inside of her thighs tenderly, prises them apart with his thumbs, and laves her with his tongue. All her humor vanishes in an instant, and only clutching the bedclothes in both her hands prevents her from leaping right up to the moon.

“You were saying?” He murmurs against her core, and she whimpers. She finds for the next few minutes that all words escape her, except for his name, which she at first tries to contain, but when he whispers “Oh Katara,” against her, she feels the impossible tension in her body snap, and her head slams back against her pillow, and it takes a full minute for the last stars to spin out of her vision. When she can see, she sees him looking at her from between her thighs, trying and failing to hide his grin. She draws him up to her, and kisses him, and tastes herself on his lips.

“Good?” He asks, all innocence and polite curiosity. She shoves his shoulder, shaking her head in amusement, trying and failing to hold back her smile.

“Good,” she says, and he kisses her again. She feels him hard against her thigh, and when she reaches down for his trousers, he does not move her hands aside.

“We don’t have to,” he says. “Don’t feel pressured if-”

“Zuko,” she says. “I want you.” And he kisses her, and kicks off his trousers, and draws her into his embrace. He slips into her, and she gasps from the feeling of him, at the way he murmurs her name, the way his body slots into hers as though they were meant to be together.

He sighs against her skin. He pushes into her, slowly, at first, but when she encourages him, more quickly, more forcefully, and when his hand moves between her legs, she feels herself falling apart once again, and he follows her.

Afterwards, when he has wiped her thighs tenderly with a warm, wet cloth, and pulled her against him to lie on his chest, he plays with her long, loose hair, and she runs her hand along his chest.

“I’ve wanted this for years, I think,” she says. “I’ve wanted you.”

“It’s always been you, Katara,” he says, with a sad little smile. She thinks of Sokka, married to Suki, living in the Earth Kingdom. “I didn’t always know it, however.”

“Stay, Zuko,” she begs him, suddenly. “Please, stay.”

“You know I can't," he says. "But come with me, Katara. Come to the Fire Nation.”

The moon pulls the tides, and the tides push the moon. They maintain equilibrium in their separation. The knowledge of what is going to happen is not surprising to her, she knew from the moment she pressed her lips to his that what they have must be more fleeting than a snowblossom. But her throat tightens against sudden, unexpected tears.

“Zuko,” she falters. “I can't. But stay, at least till midsummer, then.”

“Alright,” he concedes. “Till midsummer.” He brushes her hair, and she turns into his touch. “But you have to promise to come see me next year.”

“Alright,” she says. “I’ll come.” And his lips touch hers, tenderly.


	2. Thin Flame

Thin Flame

_He seems like the gods’ equal, that man, who_   
_ever he is, who takes his seat so close_   
_across from you, and listens raptly to_   
_your lilting voice_

_and lovely laughter, which, as it wafts by,_   
_sets the heart in my ribcage fluttering;_   
_as soon as I glance at you a moment, I_   
_can’t say a thing,_

_and my tongue stiffens into silence, thin_   
_flames underneath my skin prickle and spark,_   
_a rush of blood booms in my ears, and then_   
_my eyes go dark,_

_and sweat pours coldly over me, and all_  
 _my body shakes, suddenly sallower_  
 _than summer grass, and death, I fear and feel,_  
 _is very near._  
-Sappho 31, trans. Chris Childers

“I’m not sure we can justify the increasingly extortionate expenditures on repatriated children,” Counselor Pondo says. “After all, the fault, if there is any at all, lies with the individuals who perpetrated the alleged crimes, and it certainly cannot be placed at the feet of this regime.”

“The Fire Nation has a duty to her citizens, Counselor Pondo,” Fire Lord Zuko responds. Katara is seated beside him, around a large round table carved with a map of the world. The map’s inaccurate, as she’s pointed out to him on more than one occasion. The Fire Nation is made to look much larger than it is, and Zuko sits directly before Capitol Island. When his gloved, ringed hand touches the table to check his notes, or to drink from his salt-water mixed wine, he brushes against Caldera City, nearly as large, according to the map, as Ba Sing Se, though in truth it’s about half the size. Katara, meanwhile, is seated before the Western Air Temple, and when she tires of the discussion’s intricacies, she finds herself admiring the calligraphy that details important landmarks, even if they are larger than portrayed.

“My precise point, Fire Lord,” the woman says, her voice suave, refined, controlled. She ran the supply trains during the war, kept the soldiers fed and the army shod and the factories productive. Zuko had pardoned her, had pardoned most of his father’s advisors, because there were precious few people in his kingdom capable of helping him to run it. Zuko has written to her about this particular functionary before, at once praising her acuity and despairing of her unflinching disinterest in the affairs of the other nations. When Katara had first met her the previous year, she had sensed the woman’s disdain and chosen to avoid her. “We of the Fire Nation have a duty to the Fire Nation. We should take in and educate those who show a talent for firebending, but I argue that, seven years after the end of the war, we need not overtax our treasuries by enriching the pockets of every woman who claims a man got a child on her through violence.”

“The poor record keeping of Vice Admiral Ourlen has made prosecution of the accused impossible, Counselor Pondo,” Zuko says. It’s a veiled insult, she knows, because Ourlen was Pondo’s to command. Zuko’s good at stoking fear through mere insinuations, much better than she is. She relies on raw power to bend her uncompromising advisors to her will, rather than threats presented as facts. “And in any case, I do not find it difficult to believe that the war-drunk brigands of Fire Lord Ozai’s state-sponsored mob took liberties with Earth Kingdom and Water Tribe women.”

“It’s an established fact, Fire Lord,” the Counselor says, with a smirk like an alley-panther who’s just snagged a bird from the air. “that Water Tribe women, at least, are quite willing. I believe your own experience with one bears this forth.” The low fury which has been festering in Katara’s soul floods through her blood, but it’s Zuko who draws the flame of every candle in the room and holds their burning light within his eyes, it’s Zuko who seems to outshine the sun behind him, when he pushes his chair back and rises to his full height. She wonders if any man has ever looked so beautiful, or so dangerous.

“My father sulked around this palace blasting fire at anyone who displeased him,” the Fire Lord says. His voice is low, perilous. “Do I need to singe your ornamented hair to ensure you show good manners to our guest, Counselor Pondo? Must I discipline you like a wayward child, and set a guard on you to watch your words? I do not share my father’s interest in amusements. If I cannot trust you to comport yourself as befits an incarnation of my power, if I cannot trust you to speak civilly about the subject of women raped by our soldiers, I will be rid of you. You are dismissed until you offer an appropriate apology.”

“Fire Lord-” Commander Pondo gasps, but Zuko merely exhales, and all the candles once again ignite. One of Zuko’s guards, whose name Katara does not know, grabs the woman’s arm with a mailed fist, and unceremoniously yanks her from her chair, abutting the river Fen Shui on the western coast of Ba Sing Se.

“Lord Treasurer Mao,” Zuko says, referring once more to his papers. “I see that you too prepared a report on the situation of our annual reparation expenditures, and I see that you too raised many of Counselor Pondo’s concerns. I trust that, unlike Counselor Pondo, you are capable of delivering your analysis without insulting the Water Tribes or Chieftain Katara.”

“Of course, Fire Lord,” the treasurer says. Katara is struck by the girl’s youth, she is scarcely seventeen, if that, and her face is still a child’s. But when she speaks, Katara understands. She holds in her head a complete and total recall of every figure, and when Katara picks one at random and checks against her own thick pile of papers, she finds the girl to be accurate to the fraction. She lays her point out clearly, although Katara can see how her hands shake from nervousness, and Zuko nods sympathetically, and when she falters, he smiles encouragingly, and her face brightens, and she continues. The gist of her swift report, as far as Katara, unfamiliar with the intricacies of her argument, can follow, is that the manufacturing sector of the Fire Nation’s economy, initially devastated by the end of the war, has rebounded, and now deals a thriving trade with the other nations. The taxes on the products should easily allow them to pay the onerous reparations for the ill-gotten children, but in fact, the generous payments (which the girl, seventeen and a child and idealistic, hastens to say she fully supports) have augmented the other nations’ coffers to such a degree that they command the greatest part of the buying power, and have been able to force prices down, impoverishing the manufacturers and leading to a decrease in revenue. “It’s unsustainable, Fire Lord,” the girl says.

“What do you suggest, Lord Treasurer Mao?” Zuko asks her, tapping his fingers together contemplatively.

“If I may speak freely, Fire Lord?” She asks.

“Of course, Lord Treasurer,” he says. “I would expect nothing less.”

“No nation benefits when another is weak. You yourself have seen, Fire Lord, how enriched we have been by trade with the Water Tribes, and how many rare materials have poured through our fingers from the mines of the Earth Kingdom. Our inventors have developed more impressive feats of engineering in the past three years than were built in the last century. I believe a general summit should be called, where you lay out this evidence, and ask for a renegotiation of the treaty. Instead of gold, we will provide manufactured items. This will benefit our people, by ensuring they have employment, and will supply the other two nations with the technology necessary for advancing their own economic sectors. The quality of our products will also ensure demand for them, once the other nations realize how useful they are, thus strengthening the trade between our nations, and binding us more closely together as economic and political allies.”

“A moderate solution, Lord Treasurer,” Zuko says. “Would your tribe be amenable to such a meeting, Chieftain Katara?”

“The Fire Nation has proved more than willing to right the wrongs of its past,” Katara says. “The liquidity of your gold is valuable to us, but most of it we spend immediately on machines and supplies. A reduction in reparations would be worth the extra weeks of sea travel that it takes us to exchange currency for inventory. I cannot speak for my brother-chieftain Arnook, but I would be willing to attend a discussion, at the very least.”

“It’s settled then,” Zuko says. “Lord Treasurer, have your undersecretary prepare your proposal, and deliver a copy to myself, and a copy to Chieftain Katara as well.”

“Yes, Fire Lord,” the girl says, and bows her head respectfully, and sits.

“Other propositions?” Zuko asks the assembled council. His nine advisors shake their heads in unison. “Final thoughts, my lords?” He asks. A man whom Katara does not know stands. His hair is long and white, his beard longer and even whiter, and he wears red silk belted with a golden chain. “Lord Historian, what have you to say?”

“The issue of your marriage, Fire Lord, weighs heavily on the nation,” the man says. His voice is thin and reedy, his eyes rheumy. “It is of vital necessity that you produce an heir, and a Fire Lady to help you rule would be beneficial for your people.”

“You’re so desperate for my marriage, Lord Historian,” Zuko says, with a slight smile that lights up his gleaming golden eyes. “That I half believe you would present yourself as a suitor.” The council titters politely, and the old man fixes the Fire Lord with his gaze.

“There are duties to your station beyond labor, Fire Lord. I beg you to remember them.”

“Thank you, Lord Historian,” Zuko says, in a decidedly more serious tone. “Any other remarks? No? Well, you’re all dismissed. Thank you for your reports, their quality and succinctness continues to improve.” 

“Fire Lord.” The council utters as one, and rises and bows to him from the waist, Zuko offers her his arm, and together, they sweep from the room, he in his omnipresent gold and crimson, his hair knotted on top of his head and held in place by his flame-shaped pin, she in her silver and blue, her hair loose except for the two ceremonial braids she wears around her ears. 

“Well?” He asks her. “Did you find anything particularly interesting?” It’s a part of the joint treaty between the three nations that each national leader is permitted, upon request, to attend any council meeting of their choosing, so long as they maintain the secrecy of what is discussed. Last summer, she had spent a week in his councils, distracted by the outline of his body, before she had reluctantly moved on to visit King Kuei and his menagerie. This summer, it’s been more than two weeks, and she still has no fixed date of departure. Her attendants are growing restless. She’s growing used to waking up beside the Fire Lord.

“I did,” she says, with a smile she cannot keep from her face. “I appreciate you granting me access, Fire Lord. I believe that our mutual bond may be much strengthened by the information I have learned.” He dips his head to her.

“I do want to apologize for Pondo’s words, Chieftain,” he says. “She is a competent administrator, but her positions are tempered by her long loyalty to the Advancement, and her nationalism often prevents her from following the way of peace. Her words were malicious, her insinuation unbecoming. I hope you will not take them as a reflection of the Fire Nation’s hospitality.”

“I know what it’s like to deal with old prejudices,” she says. “There’s quite a few men on my father’s council who didn’t think I could be Chieftain. I had to bend a blackfish from the sea before they accepted me. Besides, we haven’t exactly been discreet.” If anything, she’s reveled in Zuko’s willingness to parade her around his palace, to steal a kiss from her before his stone-faced guards, to dine with her in his great hall, and to eat breakfast beside her in the city.

“What we do together is our business,” he says. “In the council chamber, you are nothing more than my esteemed ally.”

“Then what, precisely, were you sketching in the council chamber, esteemed Fire Lord?” She asks, and he flushes crimson at her question. She grabs for the small stack of papers, and, rifling through them, comes quickly to the picture she had caught him drawing from the corner of her eye. Using only the four strokes that form the character for water, he has traced the outline of her body, artfully shielded from true nakedness by a sheet. She peers more closely at herself, and realizes with a sudden iciness that the sheet that shields her is in fact the deconstructed character for fire. He takes the paper from her, and stuffs it in the center of his pile.

“Forgive me my flight of fancy,” he says, and she knows he’s embarrassed by the way he avoids her eyes. 

“It’s a good drawing,” she says. “It seems you took Master Piandao’s calligraphy lessons a bit more seriously than Sokka.”

“I also studied under Master Piandao for a good deal longer than your brother did,” he says. “Are you joining me for dinner?”

“If you’ll have me,” she says. 

“For dinner or during dinner?” He asks, his eyes glinting wickedly, and she shakes her head at him. 

“You’re unbelievable.”

“You said it, not me!” She laughs at him, but her mind remains fixed on the picture he had drawn of her, the delicate way he had wrapped the fire character around her body. 

* * *

“Your Lord Historian is right, you know,” she says. 

“Hmm?” She’s curled up against his chest, lying against an incline beneath a shade of a tamarin tree in his private garden during the heat of midsummer, her head grown fuzzy from wine, and her mind content. He touches her reverently, his hands drifting from her hair to her waist and back again, as though to reassure himself that she is truly present. She has matched her breathing to his, inhaling when he does, and their legs are tangled despite the heat. 

“We both need to marry,” she says.

“I’ve had more romantic proposals,” he says, deflecting the topic, as always.

“Zuko, I’m serious. I’m twenty two, you’re almost twenty five. We’re long past the age we should be wed.”

“So what?” He asks. “We’re the ones with the power. They can’t make us do anything.”

“Then who will rule after you?” She asks. He shrugs, and she hears his heart thundering in his chest.

“Whom would you have me marry, Chieftain Katara?”

“Your Lord Treasurer would be glad if it was her,” she says, thinking of the way the girl watched the Fire Lord, the way her eyes had followed his. “And you could do far worse. She’d be a good Fire Lady. She’s smart, she cares for your people-”

“She’s a child,” Zuko says. 

“She’s what, seven years younger than you?”

“Eight, actually.”

“That’s nothing insurmountable.”

“She hasn’t seen war like we have,” Zuko says. “You know what it’s like, Katara, to wake up afraid and to go to sleep terrified, to draw in a breathe convinced it will be your last. She doesn’t.” He brushes her hair behind her ear, and kisses her delicately. “Besides,” he says. “Who would that leave you with? Captain Baru? His father? Some boy from the north?”

“We don’t have a choice, Zuko,” she says.

“There’s always a choice, Katara,” he says. “But to tell you the truth, I don’t particularly want to discuss this.”

“You never want to discuss this,” she responds, petulantly. His hand trails lower, feeling her over her formal robes, and he bends his head and kisses her, his mouth hot and eager against hers. “I won’t leave until we come to a consensus,” she says, and she feels his lips smile against her own.

“Then I suppose we’ll have to disagree.”

“Zuko!” She protests, but he kisses her again, and she finds her objections melting away. He laces his fingers through her long, loose hair, and his lips move from her mouth to her ear to her neck, and she feels the resurgent, staccato drum beat of lust pounding in her stomach.

“I don’t want anyone, Katara,” he murmurs against her skin. His breath is blisteringly hot, she presses herself against him, soaking up his warmth. “I don’t want a child in my bed, or a girl on my arm, or a woman to rule my kingdom beside me. I want you.”

“Alright,” she says. She cannot argue with him when he speaks so sweetly, when a single glancing touch from him is enough to cause an inferno within her. He presses his lips to a spot just beneath her chin, and she gasps at the shiver that works its way down her spine. “Alright, we won’t speak of it tonight.”

“I’ve always preferred deeds to words anyway,” he responds, kissing her just a touch lower, stoking the burning fire in her belly. She finds herself wishing he would kiss her harder, would sink his teeth into her skin and leave the marks of his passion vivid against her dark flesh, but he is unfailingly careful to avoid leaving any concrete proof of their liaisons. She sighs into his ministrations, allows herself to yield to his thorough mouth.

“Fire Lord,” a voice interrupts, and Zuko, who has just begun to lift her skirt to her hips, jerks away from her.

“Here, Jee,” he says, and the guard appears from around a corner, his eyes downcast. “I thought I gave instructions that we were not to be disturbed?”

“You did, Fire Lord,” the guard says, apologetically. “But General Iroh has asked to see you.”

“Iroh’s here?” Zuko springs up, momentarily heedless of his station, and Katara follows him, hoping her hair is at least somewhat presentable. At the entrance to the gardens, Iroh, in Earth Nation green, is waiting, and she watches with a dull, familiar ache as Zuko throws his arms around his uncle, and embraces him. She ducks her head, embarrassed to intrude on their reunion, the first, she knows, in nearly two years. But Zuko calls her name, and waves her over, and she too is swept into Iroh’s embrace.

“Chieftain Katara!” He exclaims, merrily. “My goodness, you’re not a little girl anymore. You’re a full grown woman, and taller than I am!”

“Uncle!” Zuko exclaims, but she laughs.

“I was always taller than you, Iroh.”

“That’s not much of an achievement,” Zuko says, and they all laugh together, Katara’s higher tones melding with Zuko’s rasp, and Iroh’s chuckle.

For a moment, just a sliver of a second, Katara peers through herself. For a hairsbreadth of time, she is a little girl, disconsolate, desolate, standing on the ice, watching her mother perish. She watches the firebender burn her alive, and she feels the fear in her heart coalesce into hatred, and freeze solid in a single instant. And then the little girl looks through her eyes, and sees Chieftain Katara and Fire Lord Zuko and General Iroh all sharing a joke, caught up in an embrace, and she feels the twist of wrongness, of impossibility.

But Zuko touches her arm (somehow he knows, he always knows), and she breathes deeply and centers her chi, and she allows herself to be merry.

“We didn’t expect you for another week, Uncle,” Zuko says. 

“I hope I’m not imposing,” Iroh says, with a sly smile. “Your guard told me you had asked not to be disturbed.”

“Not at all,” Zuko says, far too quickly. “Chieftain Katara and I were just discussing…” the pause fills the air, and Katara is about to provide him with a suitable subject, when he opens his mouth and says, “marriage.”

“Really?” Iroh exclaims, and Katara shakes her head at the horrified look on Zuko’s face. “That is wonderful, Nephew! I knew it! Master Piandao owes me a great deal of money.”

“Um, no,” Zuko says. “Not marriage. Not our marriage. I mean yes, our marriages, but not to each other. To other people. Like the Lord Treasurer.” Iroh’s broad grin falters, and he takes a moment to process the information.

“Katara,” he says. “You’re marrying Lord Treasurer Luka? Why?”

“I wasn’t last I checked, Iroh,” she says. She’s almost buckled from her laughter, and silent tears are streaming down her cheeks as she tries desperately to maintain any semblance of decorum.

“I replaced the treasurer,” Zuko says. “She’s a girl now. And good at numbers, and math-”

“Fire Lord,” Katara says. “Stop talking.”

“Right,” he says, and snaps his mouth shut.

“Nevertheless,” Iroh says, with a wicked smile that suggests he knows exactly what he interrupted. “I am sorry to have intruded.”

“You haven’t at all, Iroh,” Katara says. “Won’t you have some tea?”

“If you are serving it, Chieftain Katara, I cannot refuse,” Iroh says. Zuko’s guards scurry off for a kettle and cups, and Iroh and Katara and Zuko seat themselves beneath the shade of a broad beech tree, where they can see the sunset reflected on the water.

“Wait,” Zuko says. “What did you mean Piandao owes you money?”

“It appears my assessment was premature,” Iroh says, his eyes glimmering, and he pats Zuko on the shoulder affectionately. “But there’s still time for me to win my bet, Nephew!”

“A bet about what?” Zuko asks, and then, his eyes widen and Katara shakes her head. “You made a bet with Piandao about my marriage?”

“Little slow on the uptake there, Sifu Hotman,” she quips, and he glowers at her in a way that entirely fails to hide his smile.

“Piandao thinks it will be because of a child,” Iroh says. “I, however, believe it will be because of a mutual love so overwhelming that you cannot deny it any more than you cannot breathe.”

“There won’t be a marriage,” Katara says. “At least, not one between us.”

“As you say, Chieftain,” Iroh says, but his eyes glint nevertheless.

“You look well, Uncle,” Zuko says. 

“I look fat,” Iroh says contentedly. “It’s amazing how much weight I’ve put on, now that I’m no longer chasing you around the world.” Iroh spins some tale for her benefit, but Katara finds herself watching the way Zuko responds instead, the way his eyebrows rise slightly when he’s embarrassed, the way his hair, falling loose from his topknot, frames his laughing face when he’s amused, the way he no longer turns his head aside to hide his scarred eye, but holds Iroh’s gaze, steady and unperturbed and unashamed.

He would be a good father, she thinks. Kind, attentive, giving, wise, the kind of man she remembers her father being, before the war dragged him away.

She thinks of Zuko’s mouth hot against her own, the way his spine flexes when she scores him with her nails, the way he twists his fingers into the bedclothes when she takes him in her mouth, the way her name falls from his lips like rain after a long drought.

And she thinks of all the times she will never know with him.

She will never know what it is to wake up beside him during the long polar winter, and watch the stars wheel overhead without a single glimpse of the sun. She will never dance with him on the autumn equinox, will never drink winter wine from the same cup, will never honor the sun’s return from the dark in a four day feast. She can never conceive a child with him. She drinks the astringent tea religiously, careful to avoid the babe that, if she bore it, would marry Zuko’s golden eyes to her dark skin, and come as a mark of shame and degradation to them both.

She will only wound herself by touching him. He will scald her heart and leave her bloody, he will burn her insides up and leave her a husk. Loving him will make it impossible for her to love another.

She knows she should go home. She’s spent two weeks in the Fire Nation already, two weeks of treaty negotiations and expeditions and inspections and councils and feasts and ceremonies and presentations. Her advisors are anxious to return in time for the late summer hunts, and she can only rely on Bato to do her work for so long.

She will go home, she decides, and take Baru into her bed, and in a year or two, she will marry him, and have children, and she will watch them and her city flourish, and Zuko-

Zuko will stay where he belongs, circumscribed by the borders the nations have redrawn, and they will trade and help and support each other, and the world will know peace.

When there is a break in the conversation, she rises and bids the two firebenders goodnight.

* * *

She knows she should go to her own rooms in the guest suite, since she’s come to her decision. But there’s no sense in ripping her heart out prematurely, so she slips in between the crimson and gold sheets of the Fire Lord’s bed, and tries to sleep. Her thoughts keep her awake until, long after midnight, Zuko, smelling of tea and smoke, peels off his shirt and draws her into the crook of his arm.

“Hi,” she says, pressing herself closer to him, feeling his heat warm her body.

“Sorry to wake you,” he says, a little louder than a whisper.

“You didn’t,” she says. She means to simply fall asleep, but she runs her hand along the hard planes of his stomach, and he moans in a way that singes every hair on her body. She can feel the stirrings of his arousal pressed against her, and she once again finds herself wondering how this happened, how she came to tangle herself up in his world.

“Katara,” he sighs, and the water in her body roils. She knows they’re both going to regret this. Zuko is seemingly incapable of sleeping past sunrise, and he has a full day of meetings that require his attention. He needs his sleep, he’s already tired from his work, and he never gets to rest- “You’re worrying, Mother Duck,” he says, tracing her chin with his finger. The line he draws burns.

“You’ll be tired tomorrow,” she says, and he kisses her ear. A shiver races down her spine, and she feels herself flush.

“I’ll live,” he says. “Will you?” His fingers graze her breast, a feather-light touch that hardens her nipple and raises gooseflesh on her skin.

“I may not if you don’t touch me,” she says, and he huffs in amusement.

Zuko is always attentive to her body. He’s intrigued by the way her toes curl when he presses a kiss beneath her ear, or the way her legs splay when he rubs circles on her thighs, or the way her eyes scrunch shut just before he makes her fall apart. He runs his hands lightly over her, his fingers searching for the laces of her nightdress, and she wriggles out of her shift, and pushes him down, and kisses him, tracing a line of wet, open mouthed kisses from his mouth to his eye, feeling the scratch of day old stubble on her cheek.

“Katara,” he says, and she never wants him to say anything but her name again.

“Zuko,” she sighs. His chest is firm beneath her, and she can feel the ridged outlines of Azula’s scar. She kisses him, tastes the myrrh spice on his tongue, the tea he’d previously drunk with Iroh. He palms her breasts, kisses her anew, and drags his fingers slowly up her legs, running their tips along her bunched muscles, soothing and arousing her at once.

She grits her teeth against a moan that forces its way through her body anyway, and every candle in the room bursts into brilliant flame, which flickers out just as quickly.

“Show off,” she murmurs. “Your guards saw that, you know. They’re going to be suspicious.”

“You’ve been sleeping in my bed for the past two weeks,” he says. “If they’re suspicious, it’s because they’re too stupid to come to a pretty obvious conclusion.”

“Zuko,” she says. “You’re the one who asked me where Suki and Sokka disappeared to every evening when we were camped out at the Western Air Temple.” She can feel his flush against her skin, and she smiles at the memory, and the half embarrassed and half horrified face he had made when she told him.

“Maybe I couldn’t believe anyone would choose your brother over me,” he says, and she cuffs his head lightly.

“You’re ridiculous.”

“You’re here, aren’t you?”

“That’s an unfair comparison. If I had to pick between you and a nice Water Tribe boy-” except she does, and there is no choice.

“You’d choose the Water Tribe boy,” Zuko murmurs. “You’d give up the warmth of the Fire Lord’s bed for seal pelts and blackfish blubber, and you’d lock yourself away in the south of the world where the sun cannot shine in winter. I know.” His words cut clean to her core, because everything he says is the opposite of what she wants, and everything she wants is the opposite of what she must do.

“Not willingly,” she says. It’s his closeness that does this to her, forces her to rip her heart open and flay her soul in his fire. It would be easier to pretend that this is meaningless, merely a union of bodies, a way to drive out boredom and quench the lust of youth. But when she is away from him, she writes him letters that she cannot send, and she dreams of him until he holds her in his arms again.

“So don’t,” he says. “Don’t marry someone you don’t love. Don’t give the only piece of yourself left away.”

“We can’t leave our kingdoms,” she says.

“We can occasionally,” he says. His voice is soft, probing. He has a way of making her pliant, mollifying her harsher, more immediate reactions. “You could have the waterbenders, and I could have the firebenders.”

“You’d live apart, seeing each other only in snatches? That’s a disastrous plan. And to raise our children separately-”

“The new airships can fly from Caldera City to the Southern Capitol in a day,” Zuko says. “A day’s distance is very different from three week’s distance. Even if it’s only once a month, we can still-” her heart hasn’t felt so light since before Sokka married Suki, since before her father fell ill. She can feel the bubbling warmth rising in her chest, threatening to consume her and dissolve her into a pool of liquid. She can feel all her earlier plans slipping away, becoming mist, as she grasps Zuko’s offer, makes it solid, real, alive within her mind.

“The children have to stay together,” she says, firmly. 

“Alright,” Zuko says. She can hear how quickly his heart is beating, and she is certain that her own is just as swift.

“And you have to celebrate my tribe’s spirit festivals. You have to participate in the First Hunt, and sing the sun into its grave, and you have to lie with me on the spring equinox.”

“I like the sound of that one,” he says, and she rolls her eyes.

“And I want-”

“I know,” he says. “A betrothal necklace.” He unceremoniously wriggles out from underneath her, and conjures a flame in his palm, and digs through an old chest beneath his window. He presents her with a black leather bag, and when she opens it, she draws out a red gem on a blue ribbon, carved with the intertwined symbols of their elements.

“How long have you had this?” She asks, stunned.

“Last summer,” he says, almost shyly. She can tell that he carved it himself, and she loves him for it, she loves him, she has for years now, and she suspects she always will.

“I was going to say I want to celebrate your festivals too,” she says. “But this is lovely.”

“I’d be honored to have you stand beside me at the annual wharf cleaning bonanza,” he says, and she smacks his shoulder.

“You’re the worst.”

“So you’ll marry me?”

“Obviously.”

“Iroh will be thrilled,” Zuko says, drily. “He’s won his bet.”

“Don’t make me regret this,” she teases, and he kisses her palm and binds the necklace around her neck.

“Never,” he promises, and she believes him. “Never.”

And when he kisses her, she opens to him. His mouth is hot and wet and desperate against her own, she sighs into his touch and allows him to ease her backwards, onto the bed, while his hands trace circles on her bare skin, and his fingers tease the nub between her legs, until she has to shove him away for a second to breathe, to catch herself, to not collapse entirely into the delirium that threatens to devour her. She runs her hands along the planes of his strong chest, she tangles her fingers in his long, loose black hair, she pushes his trousers from him and she bites back a groan when his hips thrust him, hard and firm, against her hands.

“I want you inside of me, Fire Lord,” she murmurs, and he presses a kiss to her ear and gasps when she draws her thighs around his waist. He sinks into her, filling her in one fluid stroke, and she throws her head back at the familiar stretch, the warmth that floods her, the way every nerve ending on her body tingles with iridescent flame.

He moves within her, even as he presses his lips to hers and dips his hands between her legs. Her name slips off his lips almost unconsciously, Katara can feel the blood in his veins, she can feel her own capillaries, she can feel every drop of dew from here to the ocean. Zuko moves, the pressure in her stomach ratchets up a notch, until she is wound tighter than a bowstring, and still, still he will not give her the extra pressure she needs, the little bit of heat that will ignite an inferno within her.

“Zuko,” she protests, her voice high, breathy with want. “Please-” but even as she speaks, his fingers touch the nub between her legs directly, and she falls apart, and brings him with her. 

“I love you,” he mutters into her sweaty neck, words he has implied, but never before dared to say.

“I love you too,” she responds, and the freedom to say so almost makes her want to weep.

Sated, all but incapable of bending for the moment, Zuko rinses her thighs with a warm cloth and draws her to him, pressing small kisses to her hairline, her ears, her eyes, her lips.

The moon and the sun cannot always stand in the same sky, but when they do, the watch the world with equanimity, chasing each other round the celestial sphere, filling the world with silver light and golden.

And Katara knows Zuko cannot always be hers, cannot always dwell in the twilight of the south, anymore than she can perpetually stand beneath the tropical sun of the west. But she can have him occasionally, she can name him as hers, and be named as his, even if their duties must often keep them separate.

The tides retreat from the shore, but they always return. So Katara, and so Zuko. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to say a massive thank you to everyone who read and commented and kudo-ed on the first part. I truly meant it to stand alone, but the Muse moved me, so here's part two, which I firmly believe is the end, but never say never, I guess.


End file.
